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It’s a fluke of random nature that the fearsome Ebola virus is endemic to some of the poorest and least governable countries in the world.

But unlike in central Africa, where previous outbreaks were controlled through limited mobility of local populations, the current outbreak, centered in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, is afflicting a corner of the world that features far greater travel.

So while central African countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo are hardly equipped to deal with modern epidemics, the epidemiological limitations of prior Ebola outbreaks haven’t always required the kind of national mobilization that’s now necessary to bring the west African outbreak under control. Though all three west African countries have worked to build governing institutions, they are all barely a decade removed from some of the most fearsome civil wars in recent African history. That’s left all three countries with populations loathe to trust public health officials, making the Ebola outbreak west Africa’s most difficult governance crisis since the end of its civil wars in the early 2000s.

Though the three countries in the middle of the current crisis are relatively small, the news that Ebola has now travelled to Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, via a US citizen no less, has raised concerns that Ebola could also spread even farther. Though the Nigerian government’s rapid response in quarantining and monitoring those exposed to Ebola was impressive, there are already worries that Ebola has crossed the border into Mali, where the government is still battling to unite the country after a disabling civil war with northern Tuareg separatists (and an influx of international Islamist jihadists).

The outbreak is already, by far, the deadliest in history, infecting 1,201 and killing 672, as of July 25, according to the World Health Organization. in the three countries since the first case was reported in Guinea in February.

So what exactly are the political and historical backgrounds of the three countries in the maelstrom of the current Ebola outbreak? And how equipped are they to handle a full-blown epidemic?

Though we don’t have any election results yet, Guinea successfully held long-delayed parliamentary elections on Saturday, which in itself marks a milestone in the west African country’s democratic development as the first direct parliamentary vote since independence from France in 1958.

Originally scheduled to be held in June 2007, and then allegedly to be held following Guinea’s first direct presidential election in 2010, the elections were rescheduled time after time until earlier this summer, when the government of Guinea’s president Alpha Condé finally agreed to a UN-brokered deal with supporters of his rival Cellou Dalein Diallo (pictured above) to provide for a peaceful, free and fair set of elections — the vote will clear the way for around $200 million in financial aid from the European Union.

Politics in Guinea, a country of just 10.25 million, largely falls on ethnic lines. Condé counts on the Malinke ethnic group (around 30% of Guinea’s population) in the northeast to support his Rassemblement du Peuple Guinéen (RPG, Rally for the Guinean People). Diallo counts on the Fula group (around 40% of the population) in the northeast to support his Union des Forces Démocratiques de Guinée (UFDG, Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea), with Condé consolidating support from among the coastal Susu group (around 20%) in the 2010 election to defeat Diallo.

This weekend’s vote to determine the members of Guinea’s Assemblée nationale (National Assembly) will set the stage for the next direct presidential election scheduled to take place in 2015.

Despite relative mineral wealth — chiefly through bauxite, an aluminum ore that constitutes over three-fifths of Guinean exports — the country’s GDP per capita is almost one-half of neighboring Senegal’s. There are a lot of historical and institutional reasons for that disparity — Guinea was the only country in west Africa to elect independence in 1958, which severed the links between Guinea and France, even after African independence became a fait accompli two years later. That meant that Guinea took a turn toward an authoritarian, socialist economy under the aegis of the Soviet Union through the Cold War under its first post-independence leader Ahmed Sékou Touré. Economic reform and a somewhat less harsh political environment under the rule of Lansana Conté between 1984 and 2008 improved the lives of Guineans, but the country lags behind its potential output.

Conté’s death allowed Guinea’s turn, after a half century, toward democracy, though it’s been a difficult transition. Saturday was the four-year anniversary of the killing of around 150 pro-democracy activists in Conakry, the Guinean capital, and around 50 activists have been killed in the leadup to Saturday’s elections.

Though Condé fought for years to bring democracy to Guinea, Diallo has challenged his government for ruling the country as an autocrat, and there are fears that the progress, however fragile, of the past four years may already be unraveling, especially if the government and opposition cannot agree whether the election was fundamentally fair, exacerbating historic ethnic tension between the Fula and Malinke groups: Continue reading Guinea holds successful elections after six-year delay→

In the next three months, eight sub-Saharan African countries will go to the polls to elect a new president and/or parliament, a relative blitz that will not only highlight the region’s growing, if fragile, democratic institutions, but will call attention to many unique issues facing sub-Saharan Africa: unequal and unsteady growth rates, the role of Islamic jihad and security, improving health outcomes, the rule of law and governance standards, and further development of vital infrastructure.

Between July 21 and September 30, voters in countries with an aggregate population of around 100 million are scheduled to cast ballots, though of course not all elections are created equal — or conducted on incredibly equal ground. In some countries, such as Guinea and Togo, it will be a success if the elections actually take place as planned; in other countries, such as Swaziland and Cameroon, elections will be essentially a sideshow of powerlessness. In Zimbabwe, where longtime president Robert Mugabe (pictured above) is seeking yet another term after 33 years in power, and in Madagascar, where voters will choose a new president and legislature after a problematic 2009 coup and a four-year interim government, the vote could herald once-in-a-generation leadership transitions.

Here’s the rundown, in brief:

Togo: July 25

Togo, a small west African nation of 7.15 million people, is scheduled to vote for a new parliament, despite the fact that elections have been cancelled twice — first in October 2012 and again in March 2013. There’s no guarantee that elections this month will actually go forward, either. While the government and opposition have apparently now reached a deal to hold elections later this month, the composition of the electoral commission remains a major open issue.

Togo’s president, Faure Gnassingbé, took office in 2005 with the support of the country’s military following the death of his father, Gnassingbé Eyadéma, who had served as Togo’s president since 1967. Despite winning election in presidential votes in 2005 and 2010, he’s seen as somewhat of an authoritarian leader and his party, the Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais (RPT, Rally for the Togolese People) dominates the unicameral Assemblée nationale, holding 50 out of 81 seats. Unlike its neighbors, there’s neither a Christian nor Muslim majority in Togo — out of every two Togolese adheres to indigenous beliefs, though one-third of its residents are Muslim and one-fifth are Christian.

Guinean voters were set to participate in their first parliamentary elections in over a decade later this well, despite protests over the vote earlier this year that overshadowed the elections and despite the fact that Guinea’s parliament hasn’t even met since 2008.

But it seems increasingly likely that the scheduled June 30 elections will be postponed yet again after opposition protests over fairness and transparency, following six years of delay and political turbulence — just last week, fresh violence led Guinea’s opposition to pull out of talks with the government over the long-delayed election to its unicameral Assemblée nationale (National Assembly) of Guinea.

Meanwhile, Guinea is still learning the ropes of democratic elections — it held its first direct election for president only in 2010. The ultimate winner, Alpha Condé, only narrowly defeated Cellou Dalein Diallo in the runoff, on a vote that broke on largely ethnic lines, with Condé consolidating support among the Malinke ethnic group (around 30% of Guinea’s population) and the Susu groups (around 20%), and with Diallo winning the support among his own Fula group (40% of Guinea’s population).

The disparity in rule of law and democratic institutions matters.

Guinea’s population (10.25 million) is just slightly less than that of Senegal’s (12.75 million), but its economy is less than one-half the size of Senegal’s, giving Guinea a GDP per capita of something like $1,100 to something like $2,000 for Senegal.

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Suffragio attempts to bring thoughtful analysis to the political, economic and other policy issues that are central to countries outside of the US -- to make world politics less foreign to the US audience. Suffragio focuses, in particular, on those countries and regions with upcoming or recent elections.